iFixit Deems the Blackberry Z10 ‘Highly Repairable’

One thing that geeks will do with a new device, every time, is tear it down to check out the innards. The Blackberry Z10 is no exception to that rule. Being a fairly new device, it got the teardown treatment recently. As it would turn out, the device is extremely repairable which is always a good thing for consumers that decide to buy one.

iFixit tears down each device and then awards it a rating based on how easy the device is to repair should any harm come to it. The Z10 received a score of 8 out of 10, and is relatively effortless to deconstruct. In comparison, the older iPhone models are slightly lower down the list while the iPhone 5 received a total of 7 out of 10.

iFixit engineers found that different components in the Blackberry Z10 are independent which essentially translates to much easier repairs. Inside the device is an integrated NFC antenna, housed in the removable rear panel. The motherboard is not held down with any kind of adhesive or glue, which makes it much easier to remove once disassembled. There are also a few Qualcomm components, like the audio codec, power management board, multi-band RF transceiver and the Snapdragon S4 processor. Samsung, on the other hand, supplied the 16GB NAND Flash, storage controller, and the DDR2 SDRAM. Even more components are included from ST Microelectronics, Avago, and Texas Instruments.

The entire device itself is highly repairable, but some elements of the phone are not. Many smaller components of the outer case are held together by adhesive, which means it can be difficult to take apart- especially when you consider they’re easily broken once the device is deconstructed. The problem components include the headphone jack, power switch, ambient light sensor and earpiece speaker housing- because they are all integrated into a single assembly component and held together with a strong adhesive.

IFixit also says the display is extremely thin thanks to some ‘serious fusing’ which means it can be difficult to take apart. More specifically, the digitizer is attached directly to the glass while the LCD is fused directly to those components. This creates an exceptionally sheer panel, which is protected by a reinforced glass surface similar to Gorilla Glass. Apparently though, if the glass is damaged than the whole touchscreen will cease to function. Seeing as this is true of most smartphones, it’s not all that surprising.

That being said, the Blackberry Z10 got a pretty rare score when compared to other smartphones on the market. According to iFixit, there aren’t many devices that are as easily repairable. Personally, I take things like this into account when picking out my new device. If I had money for every time I ran into a hardware issue with my phone, I’d be pretty well off. After all, they offer phone insurance for a reason, right?

iFixit took some pretty neat pictures during the teardown process, some of which you can see here. Hit up the source link if you’d like to see the whole process for yourself.